


ask me no questions (i'll tell you no lies)

by TheDukeofAvon



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: M/M, Spies, Washington Capitals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-26
Updated: 2015-01-26
Packaged: 2018-03-06 16:20:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3140849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDukeofAvon/pseuds/TheDukeofAvon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brooks Orpik's contract is bad for a reason. He might be a Washington Capital on paper, but behind the scenes, he's on an important mission for Pittsburgh. He'll spy on the Caps and communicate secret messages to the Pens via strategically chosen clothing brands. He'll work to keep them out of the playoffs by screening Holtby and creating bad turnovers in his own zone. He'll fall in love with Alex Ovechkin… Oh. Wait. Whoops?</p>
            </blockquote>





	ask me no questions (i'll tell you no lies)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WeagleRock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WeagleRock/gifts).



> This prompt was far too hilarious to pass up. Hope you like it! 
> 
> Thank you to Amy for the beta - any mistakes are all mine.

They said a lot of things about the contract. It was too much, he was too old, it was a very bad deal for the Washington Capitals. They didn't know what Brooks Orpik knew.

Brooks Orpik knew that it was much worse.

#

It was Mike Johnston who met him, one evening in late June. Brooks had been a little surprised at the summons. He'd been as interested in Johnston as anyone else, but it didn't matter for him. Not now. 

The office was shadowy, the planes of Johnston's face stark in the lamplight.

"So, you're going to Washington," he said.

It was all but settled. Brooks had known for awhile that he'd start the next season somewhere else, and now he knew the place.

"We've been talking, all of us," said Johnston, "and we've decided to expand our operations. You've been a loyal member of this team for many years."

Brooks agreed, and waited.

"We wondered," said Johnston, "whether you might like to remain a Pittsburgh Penguin, even while playing for the Capitals."

Brooks asked what this entailed, but he already knew he was going to say yes.

#

Brooks went to Washington with a mission and special phone number he had to call to make regular reports to Johnston. It helped to have a mission, especially when the real estate agent called about an offer on his Pittsburgh place.

He gave some interviews about his new team. He wore a 412 shirt to signal that he had discovered an appropriate place to plant the bugging equipment. 

#

The thing about hockey was that it wasn't very hard to fuck up. Brooks was positive he'd made many much worse mistakes unintentionally. The real difficulty was in being good enough the rest of the time that he didn't completely ruin everything by getting benched. 

Brooks thought he was handling it astonishingly well, really, and it was a pity there was no one here to admire it. He found himself hoping that the Pittsburgh agents saw that sick turnover.

It was an odd sensation.

#

The Pens needed his help off the ice as well. They needed _information_. Brooks was not yet a part of any inner circles, bu t he had access to some offices of people who _were_ in inner circles.

The door was unlocked. Brooks pressed the handle down lightly and edged into the room.

Papers littered the desk and bulged out of several gaping drawers in the file cabinets beyond. The computer monitor on the desk was turned on, glowing blue. He leaned around and saw that it was open to a folder full of video files with gibberish for titles. The little sand-filled paperweight that had been sitting in one corner had spilled white grains all across the desk.

Someone else had gotten here first. 

He looked up, then. There it was: the dark hole of a missing ceiling tile. Someone had seen that commercial. 

Whoever it was, they couldn't have been gone long. Brooks judged the distance between the top of the file cabinet and the missing tile. Would the ceiling hold the weight of a grown man? It must, he reasoned. Nobody but hockey players would be involved in such a thing. He stealthily clambered onto the top of the cabinet, shedding papers as he went. 

Brooks peered into the darkness over the ceiling. He turned on his phone's flashlight and tried to make out a route through the maze of wires and god knows what else. He didn't find one. He tested one edge of the ceiling with one hand and felt it give slightly. Maybe his rival spies were employing small children now. A lot of hockey players had young kids. It was a possibility.

Brooks considered long and hard whether to try the ceiling anyway. An image of Mike Johnston's face rose up in his vision, and Brooks set his jaw and leaned forward.

A second ceiling tile fell to the floor, followed shortly by Brooks and two more ceiling tiles. He stood up carefully and brushed himself off. No damage done, but best to abort the mission for the time being. He locked the door behind him when he left.

#

"There's another spy," Brooks said. "Someone from another team, I bet. They searched the office before me. I think they have kids working for them, or maybe trained monkeys?" Trained monkeys seemed slightly easier than trained four-year-olds, from Brooks' experience. Or perhaps they could use dogs, but monkeys were more agile. 

Johnston didn't know anything about this situation. All their intelligence, it seemed, pointed toward the utter absence of any spies from other teams on the Washington Capitals. This was of no comfort to Brooks. All that meant, he pointed out, was that they were very good spies. 

"Well, that's a new component to your mission, then," said Johnston. "Do your best to evade them."

But Brooks wasn't really listening, because he'd just realized something: he could hunt down these spies. Uncover them and hand them over to the Washington Capitals. It would be the perfect gesture of loyalty to the organization. They would trust him with everything after that, and he'd be the most helpful spy in the history of the Pittsburgh Penguins. Brooks quickly said goodbye and stepped back out of the cleaning supply closet.

Ovi was immediately outside. He looked startled for a moment, then smiled widely.

"You doing the cleaning?" he asked.

"I just needed a moment to myself," said Brooks, because he hadn't thought to bring a mop out with him.

Ovi nodded slowly. "You alright? Lot of changes, new systems, you know. It must be a big change."

"Not so big." Brooks wanted to smile over just how little a change it really was--deep down, where it counted.

"Okay, but--maybe don't go in the closets. They lock them sometimes. You could get stuck." Ovi smiled again. Brooks wondered if Ovi suspected something, and forced the corners of his mouth upward. 

"Haha," he said, "wouldn't want that!"

"No," Ovi agreed. "You wouldn't."

#

"We've lost Niskanen," said Johnston.

"Did we _have_ him?" Brooks had thought he was the only spy.

"Not like we have you, no. But we've been monitoring his communications with our agents here, and he seems to be fitting in very well. He tells humorous anecdotes about his teammates, and they invite him to dinner frequently."

"They invite me to dinner too!" 

"Yes, Brooks," said Johnston soothingly. "But we know that the connections _you_ make are in pursuit of the mission, and do not signify a transfer of allegiance.  Pumping people for information is not the same as forging the bonds of true friendship."

#

The steakhouse was packed and Brooks was glad Nisky had made reservations. Their group would never have gotten a table otherwise, and it was only after they'd ordered that Brooks began to think about Nisky's motivations. Nisky's motivations were pretty understandable, though. It was normal if Nisky wanted to come off well to his teammates, or at least ensure they got a chance to eat good steak. That was a reasonable thing, and a good thing. But what were Brooks' own motivations? Did he consider Carlson a friend? Was he laughing at Green's story because it was funny or because he wanted to coax Green into divulging all his secrets, the better to sabotage him with? Then the steak arrived.

It was thus that Brooks was faced with that great existential question: Why Am I Here. Fortunately, the steak quickly reminded him why.

 #

One problem with being a secret agent--and there were several--was that Brooks had not been snatched up by the CIA, spirited away to some top-secret training facility, and only released into the world once he knew six languages and seven ways to kill a man using nothing but a credit card. In fact, the CIA had never displayed any interest in him at all, and the Penguins hadn't given him much training. He was forced to make up a lot of it as he went along.

This mission, Brooks decided, was like being spun round three times and told to hit the piñata. You swung wildly until you made contact with something, and if it didn't scream you went in for another blow. Or maybe the reverse: you kept hitting only if it screamed. Brooks wasn't sure, and that was the problem.

And so the problem was that Brooks wasn't _sure_ whether Wilson, Latta and Johansson were up to something, and whether it was a good idea to spend the night before a game trailing them.

"Follow that car," said Brooks to the cab driver.

They were already three cars ahead, and the cab driver didn't want to drive along the sidewalks. The chase was over after three blocks, and Brooks had the cab driver continue on while he pondered what to do. 

The cab driver kept glancing between Brooks and the meter. It was distracting.

"Should I loop back around?" the driver asked. They would need to at some point, so that Brooks could be reunited with his car.

Brooks glanced out the window and saw they were passing a familiar hotel. The Red Wings were staying there. The timing might've been random chance, but it felt serendipitous.

Brooks decided to wait in the cafe across the street, just in case. There would be more taxis if he needed them. He didn't have a very good view of the rooms, and he hadn't thought to bring binoculars. He ordered a coffee and settled in, his eyes peeled for anything suspicious.

It came as only a small surprise when he saw the flashlights, two of them bobbing in a hotel window on the fourth floor. Brooks leaned closer to the glass.

Where was the third? There should have been a third. And didn't they know that the flashlights made it very obvious? They could have just turned the lights on, or at the very least closed the drapes. Brooks wondered if he should call the police.

One of the flashlights pulled the drapes, finally. Brooks glared at the dark window. 

Brooks had a look around for the getaway vehicle, reasoning that #3 must be manning it. It was nowhere to be seen, so he retreated to a well-placed bush that viewed both the front and side exits of the hotel.

He was rewarded when only 27 minutes later, the side door swung open and a figure bolted out into the night. He was past the bush a second later, flashlight clutched in one hand. He was Tom Wilson.

Brooks waited, but there was no second runner. Perhaps he'd fled through one of the emergencies-only exits, though Brooks had heard no alarms. 

Wilson was long gone and the temperature was dropping. Brooks' play might be affected if he did not leave the bush soon.

His phone started buzzing. Ovechkin's number. Brooks hunkered down further and brought the phone to his ear.

"We have emergency," said Ovi. "You're new but we need all hands on deck. The Red Wings have Latta."

"Oh god," said Brooks. He glanced back toward the hotel. "But--"

"No time to explain. How soon can you reach the Red Wings' hotel?"

"As it happens," said Brooks, "I'm in the area."

Ovi arrived a few minutes later. Brooks had extracted himself from the bush and gone to wait near the side entrance. Ovi jogged toward him, a large backpack slung over one shoulder.

"Everyone's stuck in traffic," Ovi said. "It has to be us." 

"What do we do?"

Ovi narrowed his eyes and looked more closely at Brooks. "In Pittsburgh," said Ovi, "are you--is it whole team effort? Or just a few guys?"

"Just a few guys." Brooks still wasn't sure how it worked or who the others were, but he knew what Ovi was getting at.

"And you were one of them, you know what I mean?"

"Yeah," said Brooks. He was now, at any rate.

Ovi nodded a little. "Okay, here it's all of us. Not the new guys yet, but you say you do this before, so we're good. Skip the training." He unzipped the backpack and handed something over, then pushed Brooks towards the rear of the hotel. 

There were a few lights behind the hotel, but it was darker there. They ducked behind a couple large dumpsters, and Brooks got to have a look at what Ovi had given him.

It was some sort of harness. Brooks shot several quick sideways glances at what Ovi was doing and tried his best to copy his moves. His fingers were shaking as he buckled the straps. This was the moment. Forget finding the other spy--this might top that. The Washington Capitals were counting on him to rescue Latta. If he succeeded, he would surely become a part of the inner circle.

And it wasn't only that, Brooks thought, as Ovi gestured for him to follow. Latta had been _taken_. Who knew what terrible things the Red Wings could be doing to him?

Ovi passed him a pair of gloves, then extracted some kind of...crossbow, perhaps, from the backpack. A cable was attached to it. Brooks didn't want to call attention to them by whistling admiringly, so he just whistled mentally. The Capitals had _tech_. Johnston would surely be interested to hear of it.

Ovi picked his spot. The cable snagged on something on the roof. Ovi gave it a sharp tug, then handed it over to Brooks. 

"Up you go. I follow."

Looking back on the experience from the relative safety of the roof, Brooks was not entirely certain how he'd managed the climb. Sheer adrenaline, most likely. Ovi seemed to be having no trouble at all. Maybe this kind of thing was a regular occurrence in DC.

"Okay, here's what we do. I go down that side, over room 423." Ovi gestured toward the front of the hotel. "You wait for my signal and move the cable to the correct room. Okay?"

"How will you signal?"

"Phone," said Ovi. "But if you hear screams that sound like me or Latts, please move the cable that way."

"Okay," said Brooks. "Sure. Will do. Uh, good luck."

"Don't need luck for this," said Ovi breezily, and hopped over the side of the roof.

Brooks waited. He checked his phone. He listened for screams. The only noise he heard came from the street. 

Then, suddenly, there was a loud thump from somewhere in the hotel. Brooks peered over the side, but all was calm along the facade. Ovi hadn't said anything about loud thumps.

Brooks' phone rang.

"415, 415," Latta's voice whispered desperately. "Room 415, _please come quickly_." The call cut off.

Brooks looked around wildly. How the fuck was he supposed to know where room 415 was? Ovi had said 423 was there, but in which direction did the numbers go down?

It was times like these that Brooks was glad to be on the far side of 30. He maintained his composure and drew on his years of experience. He had stayed in many hotels. The room numbers in hotels such as this one typically proceeded sequentially. Room 423 was much closer to the right side of the building, and there certainly weren't some 60+ rooms all in a row. He counted back, hoped he was right, and fed the cable down to the window.

The window suddenly opened and hands grabbed at the cable. He hoped they were Latta's hands and not a Red Wing's hands. Then came the head and the rest of the body, and it was indeed Latta clambering hand-over-hand, no harness and not looking down. He collapsed in a heap when he reached the top.

"Are you okay?" asked Brooks. "Where's Ovi? What's happening?"

Latta rolled onto his back and said, "Oh, I'm sure _Ovi_ is fine. Probably scaling another wall with his bare hands. Or practicing martial arts or whatever his latest thing is. Do we have a ride? Fuck, if we don't, let's just get a taxi." Latta got up and pulled the cable over to the back of the building.

"What's happening?" asked Brooks again. "What did the Red Wings do to you? We can't just _leave_ him."

"Yeah, we can," said Latta. "We always leave him. Our motto is: if you don't save yourself you can't save anyone else, and never turn your back on a door in Red Wings territory." He looked back. "Are you coming?"

"Did you turn your back on a door?" Brooks asked.

" _I_ didn't.  Willy forgot that the little cabinets under sinks have doors." Latta sounded disgusted. "And he's going to say, oh, I didn't think a person could fit in there. To which I will say, bullshit, you dropped the fucking ball, Willy, I pick the movies for the next month. Do you know how to detach this thing once we're down?" Latta waved toward the cable.

"No."

"Well, neither do I. Guess we'll just leave it."

Latta, seemingly recovered from his ordeal, briskly descended. Brooks followed at a slower rate. Hopefully Latta would think it was merely his advanced age.

There was a car waiting in the alley beside the hotel, and Latta made a beeline for it. Brooks saw Beagle in the driver's seat, but he hung back.

"I'm gonna wait for Ovi," he said. Besides, he'd left his car around here somewhere. He wondered how much the parking ticket would cost by now.

"Oh, well, suit yourself," said Latta. "You'll get over it eventually, trust me."

The car sped off. Brooks knew a moment of indecision, and then the bush entered his field of view. Perfect.

From deep inside the bush, it was a bit difficult to see the fourth floor windows. It was a large bush, and while this was ideal for the purposes of hiding, it was less suited to spying. It was also extremely unsuited for comfort, but Brooks wouldn't have been comfortable in a spa. He was too worried.

What if the Red Wings had taken his captain? _The_ captain, he corrected himself.  Crosby was still his real captain. But then, Ovi was very much the captain of Brooks in this particular enterprise, so the on-ice specifics barely mattered right now. Brooks didn't know what he was going to do if he had to rescue Ovi alone.

Just when Brooks was thinking of calling some of the Caps for help, the front doors of the hotel slid open. Ovi stepped out and adjusted his suit jacket. He had not been wearing a suit when he'd gone in. Brooks didn't even think it was one of his game-day suits. It looked much better than those.

Ovi stepped forward. He only started a little when Brooks came at him from the bush.

"You got out!" said Brooks.

"I always get out." Ovi smiled, then looked around. "We can share a taxi."

"Oh, uh, I have my car. It's about three blocks down."

"Sounds good," said Ovi cheerfully. "One minute." He darted back behind the hotel, and emerged carrying the backpack, stuffing the cable back in as he walked. Brooks supposed that Latta had had the right idea after all.

"How'd you get out?" asked Brooks. "I mean--what happened, in the first place?"

"Usual Red Wings," said Ovi. "Recon went wrong. It happens. It's all fine now."

"Are they, uh." Brooks paused. "Will they retaliate?"

Ovi shrugged. "We're safe here. We don't go to Detroit till April. Worry about it then."

Brooks thought he could do that. He would worry very much about it then, and probably quite a lot in the meantime as well.

They reached the car. Brooks had gotten a parking ticket. Ovi looked amused but did not comment.

Ovi gave him directions. All his answers to Brooks' other questions were cheerfully vague. Perhaps it was best if Brooks didn't know just what had happened in the Red Wings' hotel, but it would be impossible not to wonder.

"You're, uh," he said, "you've got a lot of practice at this stuff, huh?"

"I guess. You do less in Pittsburgh?"

"A lot less," said Brooks. "I never did anything like that." Maybe some of the other guys--but Brooks was pretty sure Johnston was responsible for this new era in Pittsburgh hockey. He seemed less impressive now that Brooks had seen Ovi in action. 

"Well, here we are," said Brooks.

"Here we are," Ovi agreed. "Hey, you want to come in, have a drink? Celebrate your first mission."

Brooks started to say it was late, but it wasn't that late. The entire affair had taken surprisingly little time.

Brooks locked the car doors and followed Ovi inside.

Ovi poured him a drink and made a brief toast. Brooks looked around uneasily.

He didn't want to talk about hockey, or teams, or spying. That was dangerous ground. Ovi probably didn't care about other Pittsburgh sports, and anyway, Ovi would not be distracted from talking about the team, and the season, and the Epix thing, and those were all topics Brooks would happily hold forth on under different circumstances. He mostly nodded along and watched Ovi, trying to imagine him doing...things to the Red Wings. Where the hell had he gotten the suit? Brooks needed to know, so he could get a suit made at the same place.

"...on home soil, though," Ovi was saying. "Never happen before this season, break-ins, that stuff." 

Oh. Oh no. There was another spy, there had been at least three incidents that hadn't been Brooks at all, but he couldn't think of a way to explain this without giving himself away. They needed to get away from this subject quickly.

Maybe it was the excitement of the evening, or all three sips of his drink. The way out was clear: distract! divert! discompose! 

Brooks stepped forward and kissed Ovi.

He was a good height. Their mouths matched up quite nicely. Ovi didn't hesitate at all, simply slid his hands around Brooks' waist and leaned into it, like he was randomly kissed by teammates all the time. Maybe he was.

It might have continued, but then Brooks spilled his drink. This brought him back to his senses. He was fraternizing with the enemy.

"Oh, god," said Brooks, pulling away. "Shit, sorry, I mean--I don't know what happened to me." He took several steps backward and almost fell over.

"Hey, it's--" Ovi started, but Brooks was having none of it. He continued backwards until he reached the door, then fled into the night, shouting several more sorrys behind him.

#

At morning skate, Brooks made sure to hover stealthily behind other players at all times, in case Ovi saw him and wanted an explanation about last night. But their jerseys were brightly-colored and everyone knew Brooks was there anyway, so Green spotted him and skated over.

"I heard about last night," Green said. "Good going. I knew you'd be a good fit on this team." He clapped Brooks on the back.

Brooks thought this meant he was in the Inner Circle now. 

He had to talk to Ovi eventually. At first it was just about shootouts, which was safe enough, but as much as Brooks didn't want to bring up anything about last night, he had some serious questions. 

"So, in Tampa Bay..." he said to Ovi.

Ovi shook his head. "Tampa Bay don't really play the game. Besides, you're new guy, you're safe for now anywhere."

But there was something that Ovi didn't know, and that was that Brooks Orpik wasn't safe from the Caps. And the Caps weren't safe from Brooks Orpik.

#

Brooks had just enough time after practice to do a quick check of an office he hadn't gotten to yet. He moved quickly down the corridor, ducking in and out of alcoves periodically.

He came to a stop in front of the door and reached in his pocket for the key he'd lifted off a distracted equipment manager last week. Then he noticed that the door was already ajar.

It was that damn _spy_ again. Brooks still had no idea who it could be, and cross-referencing his spreadsheets had only told him which Capitals spent the most time walking their dogs. He reached for the handle.

"What are you doing?" said Ovi's voice from right behind him.

Brooks whirled around. Ovi hadn't made a sound coming down the hallway, and Brooks wondered if _he'd_ had proper spy training, and whether the Pens could get Brooks some. He was never going to survive until the summer.

"I--the door was open," said Brooks. "So I thought I'd close it. I mean, there are spies hanging around, right?"

"Oh, yeah," said Ovi. "The spy."

"Spies," Brooks corrected. "There are at least two." But oh, no--he didn't have a good reason to be sure about that. "I mean, I think there are at least two. I could be wrong."

"Yeah?" said Ovi. "That's interesting. You see something?"

"Uh, well, not much?" said Brooks.

Ovi waited, eyebrows still raised. Brooks was going to have to give him something. And he thought, well, it worked last time. Sort of.

Ovi was more surprised this time. He jerked back after a moment and eyed Brooks with a consternated expression.

"I--I'm sorry," said Brooks, releasing both fistfuls of Ovi's shirt. "I didn't, that was, that was a stupid idea."

Ovi's expression was shifting towards amusement, and for some reason that pissed Brooks off. What was so funny about it? Why _shouldn't_ Brooks kiss him, just because he wanted to? Ovi hadn't minded the first time.

Brooks grabbed Ovi and pulled him back in.

It took Ovi a moment to react, but he didn't move away this time. By the time they broke away, Brooks felt almost as breathless as after a long shift.

"Look," said Ovi after a pause. "Game tonight, I have stuff to do. You, too. But we can do this later."

"Uh, we can?" said Brooks. "I mean, uh. Okay. Sure."

Ovi patted him on the shoulder. "See you tonight, okay?" And he trotted off down the hallway, pausing only to wink exaggeratedly over his shoulder.

He'd forgotten about the door. Brooks' tactics had once again been successful. He felt more confused than pleased.

#

There were a couple Western Conference teams after that. Nobody bothered with them too much at this stage of the season, it seemed. Brooks got dinner with Nisky one night and wondered whether he should confess everything. Nisky probably wouldn't believe him, and he suspected that was the best reaction he could hope for. But he said nothing.

He didn't say anything to Ovi either, because they lost to the Lightning, and Brooks wasn't in the mood. And then they lost to the Coyotes and Brooks still didn't say anything.

He spent the entire second intermission of the Flames game trying to devise a smooth way to get invited back to Ovi's house without Brooks having to say anything, and later he felt that probably contributed to the extension of their losing streak.

Even later, he wondered why his life was so unfair. He shouldn't have been upset about the losing streak at all.

#

Everyone was saying that nothing would happen in Chicago. Western Conference. Ovi shrugged off concerns about the Winter Classic. Everything would be _fine_.

Brooks was concerned.

He asked Green whether it might be best to warn the guys who still didn't know, but Green shook his head gravely.

"Their obliviousness is their protection," he said. "Did anything ever happen to you before you got involved?"

Brooks had to admit that nothing had. 

He was settled into his hotel room, getting ready to go to sleep, when the text came. _Blackhawk sighted outside hotel. We're on lockdown. Stay in your rooms and keep your doors locked._

A moment later there came a knock on Brooks' door. He froze in the act of checking behind the sailboat paintings for listening devices.

"Housekeeping," said a male voice. Brooks couldn't move. He hadn't set the deadbolt.

The key buzzed in the lock and the door swung slowly inward. A large laundry cart rolled into view, followed by a man in hotel uniform. 

It was Brent Seabrook.

Brent Seabrook looked Brooks slowly up and down, giving Brooks the distinct impression that his choice of sleepwear had been judged and found wanting.

Brooks sized Seabrook up in turn. He could take him. Sure. Get him by surprise, knock him--

"Boys," said Seabrook. "I might need you."

The fabric sides of the laundry cart billowed outward, and Duncan Keith and Daniel Carcillo crawled out. Keith smiled. Brooks had never seen someone crawl so menacingly before. He lowered his fists.

"Here's the deal," said Seabrook, slapping his hands against the handle of the laundry cart. "You give us what we want, we go away quietly, and we all forget this ever happened, okay?"

"Give you what?" said Brooks.

"The recording, obviously," said Seabrook.

"Uh. Which recording? You'll have to narrow it down." Brooks had hundreds of recordings by now. Then he wished he hadn't worded it like that. He wasn't _supposed_ to have hundreds of recordings.

Seabrook looked slightly disconcerted. " _The_ recording. Is there more than one?"

"He's bluffing," said Keith, sounding bored. "Time for the cart."

"But Q said--" Carcillo started, and looked nervously toward the cart. Brooks looked at the cart as well. It didn't seem like it would fit anything besides two hockey players, but Wilson had made the mistake of thinking a hockey player wouldn't fit in a vanity cabinet, and someone else had paid the price.

The intruders held a whispered conversation while Brooks watched. He wondered what would happen if he tried to escape. They didn't even know what they wanted, but there were three of them. Brooks rued the day he became a spy.

"Alright, enough," said Keith suddenly. "We're just gonna--"

The door crashed open and slammed the wall with a bang. All four of them whirled to face the opening. Ovi calmly strode through it, looking back and forth between them with his eyebrows raised. The door swung shut behind him and continued on past the jamb. He hadn't unlocked it.

"Shit," said Seabrook admiringly.

"Get out," said Ovi. 

The Blackhawks teammates just looked at him.

_"Out."_

This time they looked at the door.

"Yeah," said Ovi. "Think about it."

Maybe Brooks and Ovi could take them. It was better than one on three, at least. 

"Is-is everything okay?" asked a voice from the hallway. Brooks turned and saw an old lady in a bathrobe poking her head around the broken door. "What happened?"

"Accident with the laundry cart," said Keith. "It's alright, nothing to worry about."

"Oh. Okay." The lady sidled out the door, and Brooks saw a few more guests standing behind her.

"You better go," said Ovi. "They're calling the front desk right now."

"...Right." Seabrook swung around slowly to send a glare Brooks' way. "But you haven't seen the last of us." He pushed the cart out the door, Carcillo and Keith following.

Brooks collapsed onto the bed. 

"You okay?" asked Ovi.

"No," said Brooks. "I think they were going to torture me with their laundry cart."

"No _torture_ ," said Ovi disapprovingly. "They're not evil."

Brooks was going to make his own judgments about that. "They said they wanted a recording," he said. " _The_ recording. I don't even know what that is!"

"It was probably, uh..." Ovi waved his hand. "They get bad information sometimes. Some guy on another team says you know something, so they waste time."

Brooks was never going to spy again. He was never going to leave this bed again. It was too distressing.

"Thanks for rescuing me," he told Ovi. "That was pretty great."

"It was, yeah," agreed Ovi. "I need to be loud, so all the people come see."

"I bet you could've taken all three of them."

"Not before a game," Ovi objected. "Too risky. Come on." He held a hand out.

Brooks looked at it blankly. "What?"

"You better go to my room," said Ovi. "We can lock the door." He said it evenly, but there was a glint in his eye. Brooks shouldn't have wasted all that time on Tuesday. He'd only had to be patient.

#

They shared the king bed. Ovi remembered to deadbolt _his_ door. 

Brooks lay awake well into the night, but he wasn't worried so much about the Blackhawks. He was just thinking.

He now had an overwhelming desire to win the Winter Classic, which was an entirely non-Pittsburgh-related sentiment. But he'd been wanting to win their games for awhile now. Pittsburgh might've been a third of his life, but hockey was all of it. Those feelings were normal.

The real problem was that the Capitals felt like his team, and even worse, he must feel like theirs. Ovi wouldn't have come to his rescue if he knew Brooks was really still a Pen, and instead of wishing Ovi hadn't, Brooks just wished he wasn't really still a Pen. Maybe he had Stockholm Syndrome. Brooks wasn't an expert on the subject, but he doubted it.

It was time to remove the bugging equipment from the locker rooms.

#

This proved more difficult than expected. The arena was easy enough, but their practice facility was a different story. There were too many people coming and going in unending and entirely unpredictable streams. So Brooks was forced into a very spylike method: the dead of night.

He'd gotten everything out and was congratulating himself on his excellent techniques when he heard a door shut somewhere nearby. He couldn't save one of the pieces from falling to the floor when he started in fright. It clattered loudly.

"Who's there?" a voice called out.

It was Ovi.

Brooks panicked and ran. He fled down the hallway, shedding wires as he went. Ovi couldn't find out, he _couldn't_ , if he did then Brooks might as well go and put the bugging equipment back, and then immediately request a trade, because there was no recovering from something like that. And he could hear Ovi in pursuit, which meant Brooks had to get out before Ovi got close enough to see him. If Ovi saw him it was all over.

There was a level of panic where all you could do was pick the shortest route from point A to point B. Even when the route led across an ice rink, and the panicker in question wasn't wearing skates.

The first few steps went well enough. Surely he would make it across before Ovi saw--

Brooks' right foot slipped. He waved his arms, caught himself on his left foot, and slipped again when he pushed off. He spent a long moment sailing through the air before he landed hard on his knees.

That was unpleasant. He lay on his stomach for a moment.

"Brooks," said Ovi's voice from somewhere nearby. "Are you okay?"

Brooks rolled over onto his back. Ovi loomed over him, concern showing on his face in the dim light. Maybe he hadn't realized yet.

"I'm a spy," Brooks announced. "I'm a spy for the Pittsburgh Penguins, and I surrender."

Ovi stared down at him for a long moment.

"You tricked us. You cheated on us," he pronounced finally, grimly.

"I did," said Brooks. "I did, and I'm _sorry_ , and I was taking all the stuff out tonight because I didn't want to anymore and I, I'm sorry and I'm just going to leave now."

"You _seduced_ me," said Ovi.

"What?!" Brooks had started to get up, but now he sat back and stared at Ovi in shock. " _You_ seduced me!" As he said it, he realized this was rather unfair, but the other way around seemed equally implausible. Brooks didn't seduce people.

"You're the spy, you have to seduce," said Ovi. "That's how it works."

Brooks blinked at him.

Ovi held out his hand. "Come on."

Brooks looked at him blankly.

"Are you always gonna do this, come on." Ovi grabbed him by the wrist and hauled him to his feet. "I know, okay? For a long time already."

Brooks wasn't getting much sense out of anything he was hearing. "But you said..."

Ovi grinned. "Gotta make you sweat, right? And the spy and cheated lover, it's kind of funny."

"You mean you--" Brooks started. He said he'd known for a _long time?_ They were only a month into the regular season. 

"The guys set traps every year, for first couple months," said Ovi. "We catch most spies that way. Usually the ceiling tile."

"Oh," said Brooks. He guessed he hadn't been stealthy enough.

"Not sure about that, though." Ovi was eyeing the bugging equipment, now scattered across the ice.

"It's the bugging equipment," said Brooks in a small voice. "For the locker rooms. It's all gone now."

"Oh!" Ovi bent down for a look. "Huh, we didn't know. You can be our guy who hides stuff."

"Wait," said Brooks. "You mean. You. You want me on the team?"

Ovi got back to his feet. "You were already. You just have to realize yourself."

Brooks rubbed his forehead. "You--should've said something."

"Why? It's better like this, I think."

Brooks could think of better ways, ones that didn't involve slamming his unprotected knees against the ice, or dropping bugging equipment everywhere. But Ovi was already helping pick up the bugging equipment, and he didn't think his knees were irreparably damaged.

"Okay," said Brooks, grabbing some of the wires. "Okay. I really am sorry, you know."

"Yeah, okay, I give you a pass. I like you."

"You do?" said Brooks, too hopefully.

Ovi kissed him, and Brooks dropped the bugging equipment again.

Brooks suddenly thought of something. "Oh god," he said.

"What?" asked Ovi.

"I have to call Mike Johnston and tell him I'm not going to spy for him anymore."

"Are you serious," said Ovi. "Why do you need to tell him? It's perfect, you can't tell him! Do you even know what spies are?"

"...Good point," said Brooks. "Probably not."

"I'll have to teach you everything again."

That was okay. Brooks had 5 years and $27.5 million to spend on learning.

 


End file.
